Apache Spark vs. IBM InfoSphere Information Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Spark
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
IBM InfoSphere Information Server is a data integration platform used to understand, cleanse, monitor and transform data. The offerings provide massively parallel processing (MPP) capabilities.N/A
Pricing
Apache SparkIBM InfoSphere Information Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache SparkIBM InfoSphere Information Server
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache SparkIBM InfoSphere Information Server
Considered Both Products
Apache Spark
Chose Apache Spark
  • Apache Spark works in distributed mode using cluster
  • Informatica and Datastage cannot scale horizontally
  • We can write custom code in spark, whereas in Datastage and Informatica we can only choose the different features proivided already.
IBM InfoSphere Information Server

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Apache SparkIBM InfoSphere Information Server
Data Source Connection
Comparison of Data Source Connection features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
10.0
5 Ratings
20% above category average
Connect to traditional data sources00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Connecto to Big Data and NoSQL00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Data Transformations
Comparison of Data Transformations features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
10.0
5 Ratings
18% above category average
Simple transformations00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Complex transformations00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Data Modeling
Comparison of Data Modeling features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
9.7
5 Ratings
18% above category average
Data model creation00 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Metadata management00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Business rules and workflow00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Collaboration00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Testing and debugging00 Ratings9.05 Ratings
Data Governance
Comparison of Data Governance features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
9.5
5 Ratings
15% above category average
Integration with data quality tools00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Integration with MDM tools00 Ratings9.04 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache SparkIBM InfoSphere Information Server
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Skyvia
Skyvia
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudera Manager
Cloudera Manager
Score 9.7 out of 10
dbt
dbt
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Analytics Engine
IBM Analytics Engine
Score 8.8 out of 10
Astera Centerprise
Astera Centerprise
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache SparkIBM InfoSphere Information Server
Likelihood to Recommend
9.9
(24 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache SparkIBM InfoSphere Information Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Well suited: To most of the local run of datasets and non-prod systems - scalability is not a problem at all. Including data from multiple types of data sources is an added advantage. MLlib is a decently nice built-in library that can be used for most of the ML tasks. Less appropriate: We had to work on a RecSys where the music dataset that we used was around 300+Gb in size. We faced memory-based issues. Few times we also got memory errors. Also the MLlib library does not have support for advanced analytics and deep-learning frameworks support. Understanding the internals of the working of Apache Spark for beginners is highly not possible.
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IBM
It's super terrific with workflow automation. Terrific with data backup and convenient with encryption of data. Reliable with asset management Great to discover virtual servers
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Pros
Apache
  • Apache Spark makes processing very large data sets possible. It handles these data sets in a fairly quick manner.
  • Apache Spark does a fairly good job implementing machine learning models for larger data sets.
  • Apache Spark seems to be a rapidly advancing software, with the new features making the software ever more straight-forward to use.
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IBM
  • Any source to any target support.
  • ETL flexibility without coding.
  • Extreme data volume processing.
  • Native integration with other Data integration functionalities such as data profiling, data cleansing, metadata management.
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Cons
Apache
  • Memory management. Very weak on that.
  • PySpark not as robust as scala with spark.
  • spark master HA is needed. Not as HA as it should be.
  • Locality should not be a necessity, but does help improvement. But would prefer no locality
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IBM
  • I would be nice to have a new web development environment for DataStage.
  • Connectivity Packs such as Pack for SAP Application are a little pricey.
  • It is confusing for new developers the possibility of developing jobs using different execution engines such as Parallel or Server.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apache
Capacity of computing data in cluster and fast speed.
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IBM
  • Scale of implementation
  • IBM techsupport
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Usability
Apache
The only thing I dislike about spark's usability is the learning curve, there are many actions and transformations, however, its wide-range of uses for ETL processing, facility to integrate and it's multi-language support make this library a powerhouse for your data science solutions. It has especially aided us with its lightning-fast processing times.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Apache
1. It integrates very well with scala or python. 2. It's very easy to understand SQL interoperability. 3. Apache is way faster than the other competitive technologies. 4. The support from the Apache community is very huge for Spark. 5. Execution times are faster as compared to others. 6. There are a large number of forums available for Apache Spark. 7. The code availability for Apache Spark is simpler and easy to gain access to. 8. Many organizations use Apache Spark, so many solutions are available for existing applications.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Apache
All the above systems work quite well on big data transformations whereas Spark really shines with its bigger API support and its ability to read from and write to multiple data sources. Using Spark one can easily switch between declarative versus imperative versus functional type programming easily based on the situation. Also it doesn't need special data ingestion or indexing pre-processing like Presto. Combining it with Jupyter Notebooks (https://github.com/jupyter-incubator/sparkmagic), one can develop the Spark code in an interactive manner in Scala or Python
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IBM
DataStage is more robust and stable than ODI The ability to perform complex transformations or implement business rules is much more developed in DS
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Return on Investment
Apache
  • Faster turn around on feature development, we have seen a noticeable improvement in our agile development since using Spark.
  • Easy adoption, having multiple departments use the same underlying technology even if the use cases are very different allows for more commonality amongst applications which definitely makes the operations team happy.
  • Performance, we have been able to make some applications run over 20x faster since switching to Spark. This has saved us time, headaches, and operating costs.
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IBM
  • If you don't use all of the product family, it will be expensive. But if you want to plan use all the products and you will position it in the center of your infrastructure ROI will be effective.
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